The challenges of obtaining transcripts in Nigeria

Students/ Alumni have identified the following as the problems they frequently face in trying to obtain their transcripts from their schools in Nigeria.

 

Difficult & Frustrating

If you’ve ever attempted to secure academic transcripts from any Nigerian university, or from other institutions of higher learning, you must know how difficult and frustrating it can be. Although securing academic documents and transcripts may be slightly easier if you live in Nigeria; attempting to do so from abroad can be annoying, traumatic and time consuming.

Expensive & Delay Prone

Aside from the official fee to be paid to the school, facilitators within the school system would also need to be paid or “greased”. Moreover, friends and relatives who spent their time going back and forth must also be compensated. Transcript (and postage) that ordinarily should cost no more than N10,000 for example, may end up costing the requester upward of N40,000. You can’t even quantify the cost of time spent, along with the stress and other incalculable resources. And indeed, there is no guarantee that the requested documents will arrive, or arrive in a timely fashion to its required destination.

Susceptible to Forgery

One of the unintended consequences of these difficulties is that some Nigerians have taken to forging documents. Forging documents is a crime; but it is even more criminal and malicious when an institution refuses to, or intentionally delay sending supporting documents to enable one achieve ones goal.

Negative Impact on Ambition

In addition, many Nigerians have failed to secure employment or graduate school admission all because Nigerian schools and other institutions failed to send complete and correct transcript in a timely manner.  How many dreams have been cut short by the actions and inaction of these wayward institutions or officers within those institutions? One may never know the answer.

ETX-NG believes that procuring official school documents shouldn’t be that difficult. An alumnus of a major university in Nigeria once said “If schools want to increase the fee for such services, well then, they should go ahead. But for goodness sake, they should fulfil their obligation to their former students.”

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